


Part of the journey is the end.

by silenth



Category: Twilight (Movies), Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst (obviously), F/M, Self-Harm, mind the archive warnings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:41:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29397120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silenth/pseuds/silenth
Summary: Alice's vision at the end of Breaking Dawn, Part 2 comes true. They defeat the Volturi but suffers tremendous losses in the process. This is a look at what happens to Alice and the rest of the Cullens in the century that follows.
Relationships: Alice Cullen/Jasper Hale, Carlisle Cullen/Esme Cullen, Edward Cullen/Bella Swan, Emmett Cullen/Rosalie Hale, Jacob Black/Renesmee Cullen, Sue Clearwater/Charlie Swan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	1. One need not be a Chamber - to Be Haunted -

**Author's Note:**

> Story title is from Avengers: Endgame. Chapter title is from Emily Dickinson. The lines Esme and Alice quote are from ee cummings.
> 
> If you don't recall the epic final-battle-that-wasn't at the end of _Breaking Dawn: Part Two_ , Carlisle, Jasper, Leah, and Seth are killed, along with most named members of the Volturi.

100 A.T.

Alice had heard there was someone in Egypt who remembered the oldest ways of magic. She wondered, in the back of her mind, if it might be Benjamin. She hadn't seen him since the battle, but she knew geologists were still studying the deep crevice he created in that field. Rosalie and Emmett had spent the summer after the battle erecting fences around it, to keep foolish humans from trying to explore it and falling to their deaths.

They dressed up as government workers and created signage declaring it a state park, complete with informational plaques and benches and water fountains and walking trails. Washington Parks Department was completely baffled when visitors started calling to ask about it. They sent actual workers out to inspect it, but they found no flaws in what Emmett and Rosalie had done, so they did a bureaucratic shrug and took photos for their tourism website. Sometimes visitors asked what the name meant - Vade in Pace State Park. But no one knew the story behind it.

Alice found her in the back of an empty bar outside Cairo, in the middle of the night. She was old, older than anyone Alice had seen in a long, long time. Her skin had the thinning texture that Alice remembered from some of the Volturi, but her hair was still long and black.

"I'm told you remember the old ways."

"I am the old ways," the woman said, her long mouth barely moving as the words hissed out.

The bar was deserted, save a young couple at the front and the middle-aged bartender. Even though the woman's words were barely a whisper, they all twitched nervously when she spoke. The bartender was facing the mirror behind the bar and glanced at them once, quickly. The room smelled like cheap incense and nervous sweat. Alice waited but the woman said nothing more. She reached for the small blue velvet bag in her purse and drew it out, slid it toward the woman.

"I don't need money."

"I know." Alice lowered her chin to her chest as a sign of respect, but kept her eyes on the woman. "I would never come all this way to offer that to you. I have gathered some small treasures on my travels. Perhaps you will find them to your liking."

The woman flicked her fingers at the bag and it opened itself to her gaze, hovering in mid-air. Precious gems so rare they had no names. Old curls of paper imprinted with forgotten tongues. Smooth rocks carved with ancient incantations. Each of them rose for her inspection and fell back into the depths of the bag.

When she had seen everything Alice had to offer, she held out her hand and the bag fell into it. She passed it from one palm to the other, considering.

"You must be a desperate one." When Alice didn't respond, the woman nodded. "Come back tomorrow at this time."

Alice curved her neck, lowering her head further. "Thank you."

Alice went back to her shabby hotel room before the sun rose. It was sunny in Egypt at this time of year, but since Emmett had developed a cream twenty years ago that counteracted the effects the sun had on their skin, that didn't really matter. Still, she had her final goodbye to make.

There was a viewscreen in her room but she always travelled with her own. Esme answered on the second ring. From the background, Alice knew she was in in the French countryside. She loved it there, in her simple, airy house surrounded by lush gardens and orchards.

"Hello, sweetheart," she smiled out at Alice, her love as pure and honest as it ever was.

"Esme. I'm sorry it's been so long."

"Don't apologize, Alice." She tilted her head, studying Alice's face. She would have looked unchanged to anyone else, but Esme had a mother's eyes and they found the strain, the way her daughter's small face had become so stark over the decades, like a rock standing somewhere alone, being beaten down and carved away by the elements. "Where are you?"

"In Egypt."

"Ah."

Esme had heard the same rumors, and there were days she was tempted. Of course there were. But what saved her, as it always had, was her heart.

The past century (the time period a very young Renesmee had dubbed AT - After Them) had been a tumultuous time for humanity. There were so many lost and desperate people, displaced by droughts and natural disasters and the rising oceans. Stefan and Vladimir had built a new coven around themselves, rising to fill the vacuum of power created by the Volturi's destruction. Esme had travelled to Europe to plead with them to heed Carlisle's vision, a world where vampires and humans could live together in peace. They hadn't really listened, but they had allowed her to take a few of their disappointing young recruits and try to convert them to her ways.

That was several decades ago, and Esme and her new family had stayed in Europe ever since. There were five of them, as she had for so long had five children. They all wore necklaces or bracelets with the Cullen family crest, and they were taught to follow Carlisle's teachings. 

It made her sad sometimes, the way they saw him as some saint, instead of a flesh-and-blood man who kissed her and fought for her, who collected art and loved _the worst_ puns. He would never be truly real to them, but their love and hope saved her from drowning in the bleakness she saw in Alice's face.

Her poor lost daughter. "Oh Alice," she whispered. "Has it come to this?"

Alice turned the screen to the wall for a moment. This was the hardest goodbye and she had saved it for the last for that reason. "Remember that time Emmett got the idea to build that waterpark? When we were living in Canada? He wanted a waterpark so bad--"

"He was convinced we could leave it for the city to run when we left, and Carlisle kept telling him humans couldn't go on any of the rides he had built."

"'Their heads would fly off, Emmett,'" Alice intoned, imitating Carlisle's deep, patient voice. "And Jasper did the calculations and told him the cost of the liability insurance would bankrupt the city anyway. But we had so much fun that year, going on all those rides."

"And then the whole time we were packing up and winterizing the house, Jas and Emmett were out there, taking the slides apart," Esme finished. "Have you seen him and Rosalie?"

"Yes, I saw them last month." 

They lived in China now. Rosalie had developed self control to rival Carlisle's in the past century, and she worked as a doctor in an orphanage. There were always children around her, giggling and stretching their hands out for the lemon-flavored candy she kept in the pockets of her coat. There were a few other vampires in the area so they had friends, if not a proper coven. Emmett played soccer with them and picked up all the languages of the region. He could curse in over 300 dialects now, he told her the last time they had spoken.

There was a long pause while they said everything silently, remembered the happy times, the love they had shared. Esme had lost as much as she had. No one understood her better. ""I carry your heart, Esme," she said at last.

"I carry it in my heart." Her mother tried to leave her with a smile. "You had the sweetest wedding, Alice. I close my eyes and I can still see it, the love all over the two of you. It's always there, and it always will be."

She walked back into the bar the next night and the woman was there. It looked like she hadn't moved at all.

"What should I call you?" Alice asked. She felt a little bolder now, more reckless, the closer she got to the end. His absence ached like her leg and arm had been hacked away, and she had left a dripping line of blood behind her for all these years. Relief from pain is as valuable as love after a century, and soon she would have them both.

The woman didn't answer. "I need something of yours for it to work."

Alice hesitated before she pulled her ring off and slid it across the scarred wooden table. She hadn't taken it off in over one hundred years, that old fork tine he had twisted with his strong beautiful fingers.

The woman jerked her chin to the side when she picked it up. It would have been a slight movement for most people, but for her, it was jarring. "Love." The word came out low and the ring stood up on its end and spun on the tip of her finger. "So much love here." It spun and spun until it was a blur. "You can call me Isis," she said at last, rolling the ring back into her palm and closing her hand around it.

"Like the god?" Alice asked.

The edges of the woman's lips curved a bit. "Like her, yes."

There was a blaze of light so bright it whited out the bar, but it only lasted a second, and then Isis rolled the ring across the table. Alice caught it as it fell off the edge. It was so hot in her hand she almost dropped it. Burning with power like a newborn sun.

"Once you put it on, it's done."

Alice stood and put it in the front pocket of her pants. "Thank you."

"Safe travels, Alice."

She had never told Isis her name, but the woman's knowledge didn't surprise her. Alice nodded her thanks and left.

Time to go back home.


	2. You are the dirt in my throat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 0 A.T. Immediately after the battle.

0 A.T.

After the battle, Alice lost it. That was what Emmett told her later. She had no doubt it was a gentle sort of understatement.

Her only concrete memory of the immediate aftermath was checking to see that Esme was all right. Then time got all muddled up, like it had lost track of itself. She got used to opening her eyes and finding herself in an unfamiliar place. This world was unfamiliar to her now.

She should have known. She should have known it wouldn't work and then she should have known they would be the first ones the Volturi would target: Carlisle, beloved for his incredible ability to make peace in the darkest times, and Jasper, the Major, their prized battle strategist. She should have known. She should have figured out a way to avoid the fight, to protect them. She had thought, right up until the last second, that Aro would see her point. He would give up because he was patient as only the immortal truly are, and the Volturi would fade back into the fog like they had never even come.

Instead, there was blood and screaming and smoke, and now there was darkness. Even when her eyes were open, the light was gone.

"Emmett is going to take you hunting in a bit."

She opened her eyes and found herself in a small room, the walls roughly cut wood. She whipped her head around and found him. Jasper, wearing blue jeans and a brick-red henley shirt, standing in the doorway.

"You should forgive yourself, darlin'. You can't see everything."

"You always say that," she muttered, her eyes burning at the sight of him. How stupid they were to wrap up their whole eternity in one person. And yet - looking at his eyes, that little just-for-her smile on his face, how could she ever keep herself from loving him the way she does? 

_(Did? Can you love them present-tense when their tenses have changed?)_

"Because it's true. And what's done is done," he told her.

Emmett had half-dragged, half-carried her to a simple hunting cabin in the deepest woods. It was only three sparse rooms with a few pieces of worn, musty furniture. It reminded her of the farmhouse where Jasper had first made love to her, but then everything reminded her of him. Everything always would. She had perfect recall and enough memories to last her-- no, not until eternity. But close. Maybe almost close enough.

She was sitting on the cot that served as a bed and he leaned against the wall closest to her, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"Where are you now?" she begged him, her voice cracking and rising with her desperation. "Where did you go?"

"Alice?" Emmett's voice came from the other room. "I'm right here, I didn't leave." He came to the doorway and looked in on her.

She stared harder at the wall, blocking out everything else but her husband.

Jasper kept smiling at her. "Where have I been since 1948? I'm with you, Alice."

"I'm sorry I failed you. And Carlisle."

"You've never failed anyone," Jasper told her, and a few seconds later, Emmett said the same thing.

"Come on, Alley Cat." Emmett gathered her up, shoved her feet into her boots and laced them up like she was three years old. "We've got to go hunting. You need to eat." He pulled her along behind him again as he ran through the woods. "The word of the day is... cougar. Whoever kills the first cougar gets the prize."

The terrain around the cabin was steep and rocky, but it felt good to run, to jump. She could smell a deer maybe three miles away. The cold air brought her back into herself a little, back into the present tense, and after a few minutes she remembered to respond. "What's the prize?"

Emmett turned to her, the worry clearing out of his eyes for a moment as he smiled. "Whatever you want, kiddo." When she didn't respond, he told her, "I can steal that fancy little tennis bracelet you bought for Bella when they got engaged. You know she's never going to wear it anyway."

The thought of Bella and Edward made a pain stab through her and she ran faster, outpacing Emmett for the first time in ages, and killed the deer. She pushed those thoughts away with all her might and she only tasted the metal in the blood.

Emmett reminded her to hunt, made her get out of bed at regular intervals, talked to her even when she didn't respond. He ignored all the times she talked to Jasper. He was a great believer in physical activity as the best cure for any kind of distress, so he ran her farther and faster every day.

He was right - the activity cleared the cobwebs away for a little while. But eventually they had to stop, and the moment she was still again, the emptiness returned. She was hollowed out inside, like an embalmed body dressed for death, and still she lived on and on and on and on and oh no oh no oh fuck. She opened her mouth so wide in a silent scream, her hands clawing against the wall, ripping the wood apart, and Emmett grabbed her up and held her tight while her bones rocked and trembled together because she couldn't stop shaking.

Eventually Emmett left her for a full day to go home and check on the rest of the family. She knew Rosalie was tending to Esme the same way Emmett was for her.

When he came back, she made sure she was sitting on the couch so he would know she was ready to talk. "How are they?"

"As well as can be expected, I think. They all send their love." He chucked two suitcases against the wall. "Rosalie and Bella packed some things for you. Figured you were tired of wearing the same stuff."

She hadn't thought of clothes since the battle - she, who used to buy so many clothes she singlehandedly kept some fashion designers out of bankruptcy. "That was nice of them."

"And Renesmee did you some drawings, I put those in there too." He sat next to her, rubbed his hand nervously on the back of his neck. "Edward sent a letter."

"They're talking about moving," Jasper told her from across the room. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. He wore light brown khaki pants and the color brought out the gold in his eyes and his hair. "It hurts too much for them to stay there."

Alice exhaled. She expected that. It would be hard for them there, they would want to move on. She wanted to move on, but she didn't want to leave the last place she had lived with Jasper. The last place they had laughed, danced, kissed. The last room where he had held her.

"The house in Forks isn't going anywhere," Jasper told her. "And neither am I."

"Where are they thinking about moving to?" she asked Emmett.

"Rosalie and Esme are thinking about Wisconsin. We haven't been to the house there for a while. Bella and Edward are waiting to see what Jacob wants to do - he's been staying at the tribe, handling Seth and Leah's funerals. Sue Clearwater-- she's having a real rough time."

"Yes." Alice was surprised she could stir herself out of her own grief to feel sympathy, but the thought of Sue's utter devastation managed to do it. She lost her husband and now both of her children as well. "What is she going to do?"

"She and Charlie are thinking about leaving too - maybe Montana? They liked it a lot when they were down there fishing. I don't know. Bella talks to Jacob when she can."

She nodded absently. Jasper had told her days ago that Rosalie would announce that he and Carlisle died in a small plane crash in Alaska. Their bodies couldn't be recovered. The wolves staged Leah and Seth's death in a fishing accident, told everyone how they had taken a boat out in bad weather. No bodies recovered there either.

The town was shaken, distraught, but no one thought to connect the two sets of deaths.

"Me and Rose are going out to the site in a couple of weeks. We have to erect some barriers before some kids fall in that giant crack. We want to do something nice for them. For all of them. Do you have any ideas? Is there anything you would like?"

She looked over at her vision of Jasper, but he only shook his head. "Whatever they pick will be fine."

"Whatever you pick will be lovely, Emmett. I'm sure it will."

"I loved them, Alice. I loved them both so much." His face was twisted tight with pain. She had never seen him in so much pain before, not even in her vision of his transformation all those decades ago.

"I know you did." She reached out her hand and he clasped it, pressing bone to bone. "You were a son to Carlisle and a brother to Jasper. Neither of them could have asked for a better one."

"They want to see you, whenever you're ready. Edward..." Emmett paused again. "He's not sure you want to see him."

"Oh, Alice," Jasper murmured. "Baby, it wasn't his fault."

"I know."

"But you're afraid if he comes, he'll read your thoughts and see something," Jasper guessed - or not guessed. 

She knew that this Jasper was a creation of her mind. He didn't surprise her like Jasper could, he couldn't burn her up with a glance like the real thing. He never told her anything she didn't know. But her mind, her poor tired mind that had tried for so long to save everyone, was trying its best now to save her. So it gave her this facsimile. A pathetic moon left to light up the whole world because the sun burned itself out.

( _Her sun got his body ripped apart and then they burned the pieces of him and all that's left are chalky bits of his bones,_ she thought sometimes, over and over until she felt herself going mad. _Back to the asylum with you, Mary Alice._ )

Between the two of them, Emmett and Jasper, watching her, she felt like a bug at the end of a pin. She went back to the bedroom, closed the door.

She was at a crossroads. It was time for her to pick a path, stumble off into the world alone. As thankful as she was for Emmett, especially, and the rest of her family, she knew they needed to be together to heal. Esme took so much joy from her children and from Renesmee. But Alice wasn't ready for that yet. Any kind of happiness grated at her, left her raw and bleeding.

She wrote Emmett a goodbye letter, and Rosalie and Esme. A joint one for Bella, Renesmee, and Edward. Then she traveled on her own for a long time.

She revisited all the places she and Jasper had lived. The him she carried with her thought it was funny. "A tour of our greatest hits?" he said in that hotel room in Philadelphia, the one where he had first held her on the bed. At least it was nicer than it had been back in the day.

"Remember?" she asked him, folding her legs under her and sitting on the bed. "Remember the first time you held me here, and I had to beg you tighter and tighter?"

"I was terrified of you but I wanted you so much already. I remember I could barely put a sentence together." He sat next to her. He was wearing a blue suit today, a paisley tie. Something fancy. "Do you remember how my hands felt on your skin?"

She shivered head to toe and closed her eyes. She could almost feel it, almost hear the slide of his skin against hers, and the _almost_ was the nightmare. The heat they generated, and the way they vibrated together, at a level she used to hear underneath their panting breaths, a deep thrumming pound of pleasure. The joy he made her feel from the very beginning. 

All of that was gone, too.

"Are you going to the diner next?" he asked her.

"Not there anymore. It's a Whole Foods now."

"Everything changes."

"Not me," she told him, opening her eyes and looking at him again. "We traded so many things for eternity and we did it happily because we thought we would always have each other. Without you, what's eternity for?"

The Jasper beside her didn't respond for a long time. She tried to imagine she could feel him there, but he was only empty air.

"I'm sorry, Alice. But you'll have to find out."


	3. My father's child knows all my mother's woe

13 A.T.

By the time Jacob and Renesmee were ready to play house, Rosalie and Emmett were ready to go off on their own as well. They invited Alice to come with them. (They had kept in touch in Alice's second set of alone years. Emmett communicated solely in GIFs, he had the biggest vocabulary of them she had ever seen and could always find the perfect one for any situation. He found a few that even made her laugh.)

Travelling together, they left North America, traveling through Europe and then to Africa. 

Being together again was strange at first - Alice was still a shadow version of the woman Rosalie and Emmett had known for so long. Sometimes, if they looked at her quickly, she gave the impression of a road after the ice had melted. Under the sweet perfection of her face were bends and cracks and craters. Every place he hadn't been and every word he hadn't said had left a separate mark. 

This was what remained of a lover after the freezing.

The Jasper she had created brought her visions now. He told her what would happen, the possibilities and the sure things, and she had reduced him to this. A crystal ball, a paper doll. A teddy bear.

She started biting herself in her lonely times, low on her stomach where no one would see. She had a collection of her own scars there, smaller than Jasper's because of her sharp, tiny teeth, but they felt almost like his back when she moved her fingers quick enough and maybe every five hundredth time, she could believe for a second--

Her imaginary Jasper didn't hate it quite as much as the real one would but he always curled his lip up when she did it. His beautiful top lip.

In 1953, she compared it to a minor league singer who would soon start playing gigs around Tennessee. "He'll be the most famous person in the whole world. The king of _rock and roll_ ," she prophesized as she manipulated his wet blond hair into a pompadour. She had to pull it straight while it was wet to keep the waves out and Jasper straightened his spine in silent alarm, wondering what exactly a rock and roll was. "People will know him by one name - ELVIS. Oh, and his clothes, pegged pants and upturned collars. I wonder, should I put rose oil in your hair to slick it up like his? Just," she let a single strand dangle over his forehead, "exactly so--"

His skin went almost translucent when he was this horrified, the dark shadows under his eyes standing out like purple-blue velvet, and she broke up laughing, unable to maintain a straight face a second longer.

They were wet then because they had taken a long, hot shower together, and now they were wet again, walking through the cold rain, a few feet apart.

Or more accurately, Alice walked in the rain and the rain fell right through her imaginary Jasper, but they told each other that story and for a moment, she was happy. She laughed up at the sky and water kissed her tongue when it dropped in her open mouth. 

"Are they talking about me?" she asked, abruptly changing the subject from their past, her favorite topic, to her present. "Are they worried still?"

Rosalie and Emmett were waiting under the awning of a hotel. It was so far ahead that they were only tiny silhouettes in the gloom. She liked to walk alone so she lingered behind them and every few hours they would stop and wait for her. 

"Mmm." Jasper matched her footsteps even though he didn't need to walk. He looked down at her, some of his hair tangled in his eyelashes. "When you talk to me a lot, they worry. Even if you're laughing. They're afraid they left you alone too long." 

She shook her head. No, that wasn't it. Her future only led backwards, back to that field in the snow. Back to bones in her dirty palms and then to the days before, when her laughter had been expected and easy and unremarkable.

"I'm one of those old people trapped in the snow-globe of their past. They watch the same flakes of memories fall from the sky and they marvel at them over and over." Her shoes were too big on her feet and the water kept collecting at the back and squelching out. 

If he were truly him, Jasper would have put her under his arm to keep her dry.

When she reached the awning, Rosalie had gone ahead. Emmett stayed to check in on her, which stunned Alice because of the amount of energy he had. Later, he would have to run headlong into the night for hours and hours to make up for the amount of time he had waited. 

He held out his arm and she shook her head. It was a sweet gesture but she was soaked through now. 

"Remember in '92, when we decided to finally give into commercialism and celebrate Father's Day? The five of us surprising Carlisle?" she asked. Jasper laughed on Alice's other side and spurred her to continue. "We each bought him something typical, something fathers were supposed to have, I got him ties--"

"Alice, do we have to?" Emmett asked and he looked like a man watching the shore slip from view, the cold waves pulling him lower and lower. 

She knew the look. She saw it on herself on the days when the sun was very bright and she was very lonely and her imagination wasn't enough. Some days nothing hurt worse than going back there, even though she didn't need memories to be reminded. That was another kind of mutilation, carving up her soul with the razorblades of Father's Days and Elvis pompadours.

He must have seen those sunny days on her face, because he shook his head and heaved one side of his mouth up into a grin, followed by the other. The effort he made for her-- it destroyed her. Was there a better brother than the one Emmett had become?

"You bought him three ties because you said they went together, they were a _theme,_ and Rose got him a lawn mower that she improved on--"

"It's fine. I understand, Em," she interrupted him this time. "I know how much it hurts. Sometimes it hurts too much for me too." He put his arm around her again. _Not Jasper, not Jasper,_ her inner voice chattered away, as it always did. 

"They're gone," she told Emmett and her inner voice too, because somehow it still can't quite believe that. "But you don't have to dwell on it all the time."

He started talking about their travels, where they were headed next and the adventures that awaited them, but Alice still thought about their first Father's Day.

Carlisle had been dumbfounded by the pile of gifts, the five of them staring at him. Father's Day became an official holiday a couple decades before but they never paid any attention to it. Humans are always making up silly holidays, was Edward's opinion. 

Carlisle looked from one of them to the next, and the delight was so clear on all their faces that it finally raced into his. He laughed and clapped his hands like a little boy when he opened everything they had bought for him. Emmett bought him a fishing pole he'd never use and Edward got him new ice skates for the next winter. Esme made him a painting of the first home they had lived in together and from Jasper, a new stethoscope. (He hated buying non-practical gifts and only did it for her.)

When Carlisle hugged her, he told her that he would always think of her when he wore his ties, his clever, wonderful Alice, and she inhaled his smell - that astringent hospital soap and his own spicy cardamom scent and the lavender Esme lined their drawers with. "I love you, Dad," she whispered, her voice softer than the silk shirt she spoke into, and Carlisle went still, the way he did when he was very moved by art or by his family. 

Alice broke away before he could respond, but he wore her ties for the next six months, rotating one after the other, and she knew that was his "I love you" back. 

He was the only father she ever knew. She should have given him those words more often. She shouldn't have let him burn with any love left unsaid between them, without detailing how good he had been to her, so kind and so true. Any humanity remaining in her, in Emmett, in any of them, he had uncovered and nourished. He and Esme had watered them with their innate goodness and the five of them had grown hoping they could be a shadow of their parents.

When Emmett and Rosalie escaped to their hotel room and Alice could finally retreat to hers, she and Jasper told the Father's Day story all the way through. He sat across from her, in front of the mirror that didn't show his reflection and Alice sat in bed and ignored the thumps and moans and shrieks coming from her brother and sister in the next room. 

As much as they love her, Alice knew they loved each other even more. Eventually they will want to live in the present or plan for the future and Alice will let them go.

Then she will sink down into her past again. No matter how it hurt, how it carved and hollowed through her, she can never stop going back there.


End file.
